"Yes," she took up his monosyllable; "it's quite as important as all
that. I don't wish to be overheard. Besides," she added with nonchalant
irrelevance, "I do want a cigarette."

Silently Staff found his metal cigarette-safe and offered it, put a
match to the paper roll held so daintily between his lady's lips, and
then helped himself.

Through a thin veil of smoke she looked up into his serious face and
smiled bewitchingly.

"Are you thrilled, my dear?" she asked lightly.

"Thrilled?" he questioned. "How?"

She lifted her white, gleaming shoulders with an air of half-tolerant
impatience. "To have a beautiful woman alone with you in your rooms, at
this hour o' night ... Don't you find it romantic, dear boy? Or aren't
you in a romantic mood tonight? Or perhaps I'm not sufficiently
beautiful ...?" She ended with a charming little petulant moue.

"You know perfectly well you're one of the most beautiful women in the
world," he began gravely; but she caught him up.

"One of--?"

"To me, of course--you know the rest: the usual thing," he said. "But
you didn't come here to discuss your charms--now did you?"

She shook her head slightly, smiling with light-hearted malice. "By no
means. But, at the same time, if I've a whim to be complimented, I do
think you might be gallant enough to humour me."

But he was in anything but a gallant temper. Mystery hedged his thoughts
about and possessed them; he couldn't rid his imagination of the
inexplicable circumstances of the man who had broken into his rooms to
steal nothing, and the knot of velvet ribbon that had dropped from
nowhere to his study floor. And when he forced his thoughts back to
Alison, it was only to feel again the smart of some of the stinging
things she had chosen to say to him that night during their discussion
of his play, and to be conscious of a certain amount of irritation
because of the effrontery of her present pose, assuming as it did that
he would eventually bend to her will, endure all manner of insolence and
indignity, because he hoped she would marry him.

Something of what was passing through his mind as he stood mute before
her, she read in his look--or intuitively divined.

"Heavens!" she cried, "you're as temperamental as a leading-man. Can't
you accept a word or two of criticism of your precious play without
sulking like--like Max does when I make up my mind to take a week's
rest in the middle of the season?"

"Criticise as much as you